In the early hours of March 7, 2009, David Jentsch was startled out of his slumber by the sound of an explosion in his driveway. Running outside, the UCLA professor found that his car had been firebombed. His car was destroyed, and the fire spread to a nearby tree before firefighters were able to control it.

Self-described members of the “Animal Liberation Brigade” claimed responsibility for the firebombing, warning Jentsch in a message posted March 8 on the website of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office (which publishes communiqués from underground animal rights activists) that “we will come for you when you least expect it and do a lot more damanage [sic] than to your property.

Prior to the firebombing of his car, Jentsch, a professor of psychology and psychiatry whose research involves rodents and primates, had had no personal contact with animal liberation activists. He responded to the attack by forming Pro-Test for Science, a community of researchers that works to counter the radical animal liberation movement.

Soon, Jentsch found himself subject to daily harassment, including menacing emails and packages containing razors. It emerged that an obscure Florida-based group called Negotiation is Over (NIO) had targeted the UCLA professor as public enemy No. 1, posting his picture and contact information on its website and urging the animal liberation community to take action against him.

NIO is the brainchild of Camille Marino, a 47-year-old former investment banking professional who for the past three years has devoted her life to radical animal rights activism. According its website, NIO “strives to be an instrument of defiance, disruption, disobedience, subversion, creative & aggressive grassroots action, and a catalyst for revolutionary change. Total liberation – human animals, nonhuman animals, and the earth – will not happen by politely asking abusers to be decent. Emotion and passion drive action … not sterile debate.”

It continues, “NIO has changed the rules by which animal activists engage abusers. The philosophy is simple yet profound; anyone who engages in the horrific treatment of any sentient being should no longer expect to remain anonymous. They and their family, friends, neighbors and colleagues should be made to face the awful truth. NIO has opened a new front in the war to end animal exploitation and is a vital voice for the animals.”

The rest of website is essentially a one-stop shop for radical animal liberationists, featuring a “Tools for Activists” section with links to information on picking locks and making flash bombs, a hacker training site, and the extremist Animal Liberation Front’s (ALF) primer. It also has a section called “NIO’s Most Wanted,” with the names, addresses and other personal information about seven researchers – Jentsch among them – whom the group considers to be the worst perpetrators of the “animal holocaust.”

A section titled, “Strategies and Tactics,” offers information about other groups (both in the animal liberation movement and outside) whose “creative and aggressive” techniques are intended to “inspire activists to escalate our response to the urgent war being waged against animals and the planet.” One example is Individualities Tending Towards Savagery (ITTS), a Mexico-based group that targets nanotechnology researchers with parcel bombs. ITTS, which has been linked to attacks in Mexico, France, Spain, and Chile, models its tactics on those of the “Unabomber,” former Berkeley Professor Theodore Kaczynski, who killed three professors and wounded 23 others during a two-decade campaign against technological advancement. Several nanotechnology researchers and support staffers have already been wounded as a result of ITTS actions, and the group claims it will continue “without compassion and without mercy.”

Asked by Hatewatch whether she personally endorses violence as a tactic to achieve NIO’s goals, Marino equivocated. “There is a war being waged against animals and any act committed in the name of love and compassion against those who are waging the war I do not consider an act of terrorism,” she said in an Oct. 31 phone interview. “I’ve never committed a crime in my life. I’ve never done anything violent and I don’t intend to. But if some unknown person took that step, I would support and applaud it.”

The fact is, she has all but called for it. In an NIO post dated a June 12, 2010, Marino featured a chalk outline and the words “Animal Abuser Was Here,” and wrote, “The [chalk outline] image on this page is not a cute logo. It is my personal belief that if you are a sadistic animal torturer, that is all you deserve – a chalk outline. That’s my opinion, not a threat. It’s not even inciting anyone because, unless you read my words and run out and murder David Jentsch (an idea that amuses me immensely), I’m not responsible. If you have time to think about it and form your own conclusions, my words cease being the impetus.”

“If you spill blood, your blood should be spilled as well. [W]e’re no longer playing games. We will print your information. And we’ll be at your homes. We’ll be at your work. We’ll be at your country clubs and golf courses. We’ll see you at your manicurist and we’ll be kneeling next to you when you take that next holy communion wafer on Sunday. If I have my way, you’ll be praying to us for mercy.”

Marino – who on Oct. 27 was declared persona non grata on the campus of Detroit’s Wayne State University after she targeted a cardiovascular researcher there – again stressed to Hatewatch that she bears no responsibility for anything that befalls the researchers featured on the NIO website.

“I simply published information about a man who tortures dogs to death for money. He’s euphemistically called a researcher,” she said of the Wayne State professor. On NIO’s website, she described the researcher as a “Serial Torture-Murderer” while encouraging “[l]ocal NIO activists” to “show up at his home and snap pictures of his blood-money mansion and his miscreant spawn for publication.”

“I continue to get injunctions and bans for doing this,” Marino said. “If we were talking about bakers and I were publishing pictures of their cupcakes and their addresses, no one would say I am a terrorist. They would say I am advertising.”

“I don’t endanger anyone’s life. We’re talking about a man who literally over long periods tortures animals to death. I’m saying to him that if this embarrasses you, if my publishing this makes you live in fear, it’s not me that you fear, it’s not any activist that you fear. … His reaction to having his information out there is wholly removed from my intent. My intent is, I publish information about criminals. There’s no intent that anything should happen beyond that. If the publication of such materials makes him be afraid for his life – well, the baker would not be afraid if I published his recipes.”

“I am above ground and I try to stay within the law. But the law does not exist to protect the innocent. The law exists to regulate and enforce the agenda of the corporate industrial complex. Their job is to make money, to make money off the animal holocaust. When we talk about laws, it’s all relative. Obviously I don’t want to go to jail over nonsense, but I will if I have to. Those laws are irrelevant. They exist to protect those who harm the innocent.”

Jentsch, who has been aware of animal liberation activists throughout his career (though he was not personally targeted until the 2009 firebombing of his car), told Hatewatch in a phone interview that Marino epitomizes a new kind of animal liberation extremist. While earlier activists targeted institutions and labs, NIO has a more disturbing approach. The adoption of the idea that “the best strategy is to target individuals,” Jentsch said, “is the truly frightening aspect of this movement.”

Such personal attacks have been going on for about a decade, he said, but NIO is the first website he’s seen to promote them so aggressively. “One of the things that’s been distinctive in her website and her movement is you see this commiseration, this coming together of a group of people across the country that are the most hateful and the most willing to be blatant about their sort of lust for violence. … She creates a permissive environment by being a model, and then she provides the information. Here’s the person, here’s the email, send it. She becomes this vehicle for almost unbelievable animosity and hatred.

“She has taken this to a level that very few others have. She’s really become sort of the nationally visible representative of ‘just pummel people. Take them on personally. Put all the cards on the table and do everything possible to crush them.’ That part is distinctive about her; it’s almost an art form.”

For a while after Marino and NIO began targeting him after the firebombing, Jentsch simply monitored the website, trying not to be bothered by the verbal attacks. He says NIO had been harassing him for about a year when Marino posted the chalk outline and indicated that she would be amused if someone killed him. Jentsch tried moving and changing his phone number, but an NIO sympathizer found him, and soon the website featured his new home address and a photo of his gate, along with detailed instructions on hacking home security gates. On July 19, 2010, Marino sent him an email that said, “Everyone at NIO is most anxious to throw you a housewarming … a very very hot housewarming. haha. Just joking.”

Frightened by what he interpreted as a threat of arson, Jentsch obtained a permanent restraining order against Marino. Though he is still listed among NIO’s “most wanted,” the group seems to have turned its attention toward other researchers – including undergraduates, whom Marino describes as “the soft-bellied target of the vivisection complex.” In a case reported on by Security Management magazine, NIO used a barrage of emails to bully a Florida Atlantic University undergraduate who used fruit flies in her research into pursuing a different course of study.

There are some signs that Marino is struggling to keep the group afloat. She has bragged that NIO has a “global network of cells ready, willing, and able to act as a coordinated unit.” It is unclear whether this is true, through it does appear that sympathizers from around the country contribute intelligence to her website and react to her battle cries. But on October 28, NIO’s website featured a message asking for donations in exchange for membership that would include an official card, “eligibility to apply for charter for local NIO chapter,” a subscription to a quarterly newsletter covering strategies and tactics, and access to a private forum to be launched in 2012.

The request for money has gotten mixed reviews; while some activists responded positively, others called her a sell-out.

Responding to an objector nicknamed “Diablo,” Marino posted a message saying she had already sunk thousands of dollars of her own money into the website to protect it from sabotage and move to a server in Iceland “to indemnify it against injunctions and actions against me,” and that she anticipates upcoming “legal and campaign expenses” to cost at least $10,000 dollars.

“I fear nothing,” she wrote. “Not jail. Not prison. Not your judgments about issues you clearly do not understand. Not ostratization [sic], marginalization, or backlash. … I fear no human.”

“My only fear lies in letting the animals down and failing at a point where we are poised to penetrate and undermine the enemy in a manner never yet attempted. Unfortunately, since I too live in a capitalist world, this takes money and resources. Thus far, I have shouldered the overwhelming share of financial responsibilities of seeing this uncompromising vision of liberation begin the [sic] bear some fruit. And now we will see if our community will step up and support the vision that thousands of us purport to believe in.”

Editor’s Note:
Marino was fully aware during the interview that she was talking with a blogger from the Southern Poverty Law Center, even volunteering that she is familiar with the SPLC’s history of denouncing radical animal rights activists like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). She approved a transcript of her interview, writing in an E-mail, “I think you captured everything I said perfectly.” Hours later, Marino contacted the blogger and said she wanted to withdraw her consent to be quoted, saying that she did not want to be quoted on “a blog filled with the most contemptible groups of racists, bigots, madmen, and hatemongers … groups that I despise.” Following widely accepted journalistic practice that once an on-the-record interview is conducted, permission cannot be withdrawn, Hatewatch decided to publish quotes from the interview.

It is very sad to see people (Pamela) how she says that she feels for the hell that her friend David Jentsch aka murder, has went through over the past year ,But the bigger question should be throughout that year of hell he went through he went to work day after day to TORTURE Primates and other animals.I feel that problems in a persons life is a result of things that they have done past and present .To those of you that say vivsector help mankind ,they also said that about Slavery.PS to SPLC you label Marino NIO as a hate group because they speak out aganist vivisectors, if they spoke for a humans you would praise them . VERY SADDEN

Mr. raven

You published quotes against an interviewed person specifically stated wishes, what a high standard of excellence and ethics! :( x 100000

It’s sad you drag people trying to do valuable anti racism, anti homophobia, through the mud of your overtly dishonorable statist and corporatist agenda and utter lack of journalistic ethics, shame!

Otto

“Vivisectors never willingly publish pictures of what they do precisely because it is so horrific.”

By the way, where are the pictures of the cat that Marino killed by experimenting on it with a vegan diet? (An incident that makes her a liar when claiming never to have committed a crime as well as a hypocrite.)

It must be a charming photo album.

Ellie Maldonado

Robert W, that we may have benefited from some animal exploitation does not justify it, or suggest we can’t obtain the same or greater benefits in other ways.

Animal agriculture uses more water and other resources, and creates more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry. The following article published in the Cornell University News explains further: http://www.news.cornell.edu/re.....k.hrs.html

“It takes 2,500 gallons of water, 12 pounds of grain, 35 pounds of topsoil and the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of feedlot beef ……. 70% of US grain production is fed to livestock.

5 million acres of rainforest are felled every year in South and Central America alone to create cattle pasture.

Roughly 20% of all currently threatened and endangered species in the US are harmed by livestock grazing.
Animal agriculture is a chief contributor to water pollution. America’s farm animals produce 10 times the waste produced by the human population……. (continued)”

Robb W

To say no testing based on animal research has helped to treat or cure human ailments is asinine. Snake venom is used in alzheimers, cancer and other medical research. Insulin and horses, pig organs and so on. I mean seriously…..snake anti venom is from snake venom! Groups like ALF want no research whatsoever and not even animals for food, clothing or pets. Total vegan society. So where are we supposed to grow those vegetables? On decimated wildlife habitats cleared for plowing. And then water them by draining the wetlands and swamps. Great way to save the animals there.
Next time the animal rights extremists decide to splash some red paint, they should try it on leather clad bikers instead of old ladies.

all good fun

p.s. Aron the ALF is neither left wing not right wing

all good fun

It’s all good fun that you write these long articles and stuff but you don’t seem to understand that this is a war. We don’t care about the criticisms you have. While the comparison to a baker is not entirely helpful it does have merit. Vivisectors never willingly publish pictures of what they do precisely because it is so horrific. At least this time you have actually got some quotes instead of spouting nonsense about how the ALF act like anti-abortion activists. As much as you may like that analogy noone has ever come close to being killed by the ALF. Until that time comes pipe down with your exaggerations.

Ellie Maldonado

concerned citizen said, “animal research is intended to benefit mankind, it is critical to screening new therapies and making sure those therapies are safe.”

———–

Animal research is intended to mitigate the pharmaceutical company’s responsibillity in law suits that follow when drugs harm humans.

Ellie Maldonado

Numero 10 said, I work with rats to try and find a treatment (hopefuly a cure) for various autoimmune diseases. My rats are bred for this purpose, they are kept warm, well fed, handled with care, and I use anesthetics overdose to euthanize all my rats. I only uise the very minimum to generate statistically-significant data.
My neighbor, on the other hand, uses sticky pads to trap mice that enter her garage and attic when it gets cold outside and lets them die of starvation before throwing them in the trash. Such inhumane treatment of rodents would never be allowed in a research lab without serious justifications,
————

What possible justifications could there be? And two wrongs don’t make a right.

Ellie Maldonado

Denis Alexander said, Sentience is not a binary attribute. As many other morally relevant properties it is graded in nature. To argue that a mouse or monkey has the same level of sentience, emotion or cognition than a normal human is simply wrong.

————

They don’t have the same level of cognition as average humans, but they experience pain and emotions just like we do. And they have a personal interest in their well being, just as we do in ourselves. The line between humans and other animals is a convenient illusion.

Ellie Maldonado

To All: It’s important to understand that car bombings and the like do not represent animal rights advocacy. The assumption here is that David Jentsch’s car was bombed by an animal rights activist, but if this person was, he would eschew violence. See “Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror” by Lee Hall.

Ellie Maldonado

Aron, what proof are you looking for? Are you saying
emotions and an understanding of hierarchy are not
indications of self awareness? If so, I disagree. Even
physical sensation involves some degree of self recognition.

That this is a new field of study is not surprising — because science uses animals, it’s easier for researchers to be unaware of what they’re capable of thinking and feeling. As James Masson explained, the subject of nonhuman emotions is taboo: “When an elephant gets emotional”: http://www.independent.co.uk/n.....21235.html

Nevertheless, some scientists have been willing to venture into forbidden territory:

There are more articles available on the web, and books by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson — “The Pig Who Sang to the Moon, the Emotional World of Farm Animals” and several others.

http://www.twitter.com/AronL Aron

Ellie,

I asked for proof. You gave me names. Obviously you know what I’m talking about.

Self awareness and awareness of physical sensation are two wholly separate conditions. One requires conscious mentation. The other merely requires a functioning nervous system.

While I will never claim that animals involved in research live ideal existences, I believe that researchers attempt to make the animals as comfortable as is possible. Unnecessarily Stressed subjects give false results.

Please, I would be very intrigued to read relevant scholarly articles. And I would be more than happy to change my opinion. Just provide the proof.

Ellie Maldonado

Aron, while dogs apparently don’t recognize themselves in a mirror, they demonstrate self awareness in other ways. For example, they understand hierarchy, so they must have an idea of themselves in relation to others. Another example, when dogs are in distress, they have an awareness that something in relation to themselves is not what it should be. And no doubt they are aware of their own physical sensations. There are probably other examples, but I think dogs (and many other animals) clearly have a sense of themselves / aka self awareness.

Btw, funny thing about dogs and a mirror test — I wouldn’t say my dogs demonstrated self recognition, but they also didn’t bark as they certainly did bark at other dogs. So why not? I don’t know what they were thinking, but it seems they didn’t see the mirror as another dog either.

How would a dog show self recognition in a mirror anyway? How do dolphins and elephants show it? They don’t have hands to point to something as chimpanzees do. I imagine the most dogs could do is show an interest.

I think some scientists are way too arrogant. Because some researchers decided a mirror test was a valid measure of self awareness, nothing else counts? If they were willing to think beyond the lab, they would find other examples of self awareness.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is a psychologist who studied nonhuman animals, and found they think and feel a whole lot more than we usually give them credit for. As did Mark Bekoff, former Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, who shows nonhumans are emotional beings.

http://www.twitter.com/AronL Aron

Heya, Dickie!

How about the Animal Liberation Front? Is that good enough for you?

Maybe you need to keep looking for those terrorist training camps.

Dick Lancaster

The SPLC has a history of denouncing radical animal rights activists? How many of them are on the hate list?

http://www.twitter.com/AronL Aron

Ellie,

Yup. Because when I show my dog, a beagle/border collie (two of the smartest breeds) a mirror, he realizes he’s looking at himself, right?

Wrong. He looks at it and keeps walking.

If there was a smell, he might think it belonged to him. But there is no self-awareness.

But I’ll give you a fighting chance to prove what I feel are silly ideas. Present to me an article from, say, ‘Nature,’ supporting your position. I think such an eminent journal would be appropriate for such momentous findings.

The ball, as they say, is in your court.

Ellie Maldonado

Aron, most nonhuman animals (dogs, rats, cows, cats, bears, snakes, even cockroaches, etc.) do have self awareness. The mirror test is only one example.

TitMaus

Camille is the biggest hypocrite it has ever been my displeasure to exchange emails with. Animal rights? She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about animals! Here’s the truth: Camille hates PEOPLE. Next time you have the misfortune to speak to her remember to ask her about the cat she STARVED TO DEATH by insisting it eat a vegan (and totally inappropriate) diet. You might also ask her just exactly what role she played in the DEATH of her own mother. She was quite candid about this with me and if you go through the mass of archived emails on her NIO site you’ll find her admissions are all there. She is very smart but, she is also a KOOK of the highest order and a very dangerous one at that. No, I doubt she’d ever pull the trigger (though maybe she might “trip” over the plug wire) on anyone in person but, she’d be there in the room egging them on. Basically, she’s a monomaniacal space cadet with delusions of grandeur and a coward to boot. Who knows, maybe she’s an agent provocateur. The only upside to her lifestyle is that she’ll more than likely die young as a result of her highly dangerous dietary habits.

Sam Molloy

Research is one thing and factory farming is another. Chickens and pigs will eat you if you fall down among them and can’t get up but I believe that all of our commonly eaten meats are becoming less healthy by the use of hormones and antibiotics anyway. Combine that with the environmental concerns and the waste of them eating grain first, and it’s pretty clear that our diet will become more and more vegetarian.

Ellie Maldonado

While I oppose militant action, I recognize that nonhumans are personal beings who can think, feel, experience emotions, and who rightfully belong to themselves. Thus, our sense of fairness should admit that animal research is wrong and the animal model should be replaced. In fact, animal research also fails in the study and treatment of human diseases.

Lab animals experience physical and emotional pain. Indeed, pain relief has often been witheld because it is thought to compromise research. And unlike other animals who almost always kill for survival, most humans have a choice of food. We are the only animal who kills for gratuitous reasons. The history of agriculture shows that human oppression is rooted in the domestication of other animals. In my view, it’s a good idea to “strike the root”.

Becky

While i am against animal testing myself, i find what these morons do as terrorism plain & simple. There are others ways of going about ending this type of testing, but threatening to harm people or vandalizing their property, will never achieve anything positive.

Charles Rowe

These animal rights folks never seem to remember that in nature animal are hunted and killed all the time. That is just the circle of life, some feed on vegetation and others feed on them and then their bodies feed the vegetation. Perhaps someone should remind them that the place in nature for vegetarians is as prey, and that humans are further along the food chain. It is our natural place in life to kill and eat meat, just as other omnivores do.

Justin

@Bea,

It is true that animals “give” nothing. Indeed, much research involves taking their lives but in a way that minimizes their pain and suffering with the use of analgesics and anesthetics. Society believes that such work is morally permissible because it has the goal of eliminating the suffering that illness brings to human kind and no other options are available a the present time.

Animal activists may disagree with the ethical or scientific basis of such a position, but if they want to be part of a democratic society where moral disputes are resolved via civil discussion they ought to learn the rules of engagement. Their threats, intimidation and harassment are not to be tolerated any more.

Brian

If the NIO believe this researcher is public enemy #1, they’ve apparently never been to an animal control facility or kill ‘shelter.’

Donald M

I wonder if animal rights zealots are guided by some extremist religious view, or just mental illness. Life consumes life to survive. using the logic of animal rights extremeists people who would kill people who kill animals, then they must favor killing animals that kill other animals for food. That would pretty much wipe out a sizeable chunk of the animal kingdon. I know a militant Vegan who put her dog on a vegan diet- and sure enough, it died from malnutrition. Consuming animals as food is how nature works. And interesting how the animal rights cult decided that only sentient lifeforms have any value. Isn’t that ‘species racist’? Most of these hardcore animals rights people have serious mental health problems- they can’t connect to their fellow human being, feel hatred for humanity, and find justification in that hatred by joing the animal rights cult mindset. Most hardcore animal rights people I have met despise humanity.

Lex

You post home addresses,pictures, and phone numbers of people on that site in a section that is called “most wanted”, at the same time you are calling them murderers,sadists and other vile things and you’r site link’s to guid’es on how make bomb’s and arson if you are not trying to incite by doing that what the hell is point of doing this?

Charles Swanson

I am NOT an activist of any type, BUT the HELL that is inflicted on animals in this country is appalling, and something has to be done.

I disagree strongly with their methods, but watch on HSUS video on the way animals are treated, and you will never forget it.

Compassion for animals is common among the good guys, but not among the bad ones. One of the surest signs that a biblical figure is a player in God’s redemptive plan is the person’s decency to the beasts of the field. Humane treatment of animals is seen here with Noah and will be repeated by Moses, Rebecca, Laban, and a host of others. It is not a coincidence that Christ is referred to as the ‘Good Shepherd’.

As St. Francis of Assisi said: “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”

After watching some of the videos on the way animals are treated across our society makes one point very clearly – - who are the REAL animals, and it is not of the four-legged kind.

Marcia

Whether it’s animal research or the recent undercover investigation of abuse on factory farms, not enough is done to stop the cruelty and punish the abusers. If laws were honestly passed and enforced, maybe the animal liberationists wouldn’t have so much ammunition to work with.

http://www.twitter.com/AronL Aron

@Bea,

These animals are not sentient. Enough with the lies.

Bea Elliott

@wlcomeau – Animals “give” nothing – Everything they have is taken by force… Anyone who uses this term is trapped in the Golden Books where cows “let down” their milk and wool and eggs are generously provided by sheep and hens.

I think calling something for what it is is a great first step towards viewing the issues for the reality that it is… These are helpless, sentient beings whose bodies are exploited for profit. Go from there with the truth and it’s no wonder “science” that uses nonhumans is becoming so greatly contested.

The “deal” was to “reduce, refine, replace” in order to maintain an “ethical” position – Clearly with the continued use – indeed the EXPANSION of animal-testing this criteria has NOT been met. At what point will a lie be named as such – And what recourse is there when the lie is accepted as truth?